Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and the Lost Art of Competitiveness

They are doing something else now. Most of the competitors that pushed and nurtured Paul Pierce’s inner rage-Tracy McGrady, Allen Iverson, Reggie Miller– all have eased themselves into their post-retirement lives. Vince Carter is still around. So is Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade. Lebron James is 30 years old. The list pretty much ends there, players honed in the old school of basketball, the school of I-will-destroy-you-and-you-can’t-stop me.

In town to play the Lakers, Paul Pierce admitted to reporter Mark Medina how he and Kobe Bryant are the last of their breed.

"“We’re one of the last two of our generation. There’s no trash talkers in the league today coming up. It’s a generation that’s passing by and a lot of these guys are friends. I don’t think this new generation is as competitive as we were with the past guys.”"

Dec 3, 2014; Washington, DC, USA; Washington Wizards forward Paul Pierce (34) talks to Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant (24) at Verizon Center. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

Paul Pierce was a lottery pick drafted in 1998 after a starring role at the University of Kansas. His rookie season was in the shortened lockout year; he averaged 16 points and 6 rebounds. The following year he was a 19 point scorer and solidified his narrative as a dominant small forward who liked physical play. His matchups with Kobe and the Lakers were always tough and gritty. It was Shaquille O’Neal who nicknamed Paul Pierce The Truth.

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Paul Pierce played Kobe Bryant 23 times in the regular season. He averaged 24 points a game, Kobe averaged 25. His most memorable matchup Pierce still reflects on. He wrote about in the Players Tribune.

It was a November 7^th game in Boston in 2003. Bryant played 46 minutes and took 47 shots. Pierce played 44 minutes and took 25 shots. The Celtics won by three points.

"He made seven or eight shots in a row on me. So we come into the huddle and during a timeout and Coach is looking at me with a face that I knew meant he wanted me to switch off of Kobe. I yelled, “Hell no! I’m going to guard him. I got this!”He ended up missing the last nine shots of that game with me on him and we won. But the stat sheet is still vivid in my mind. Kobe took 47 shots. Forty-seven. No one has ever taken forty-seven shots on me. If you want to have any defensive success against Kobe, you can’t break."

There was another game on January 30, 2011 when Pierce played against Bryant and Bryant had 0 assists and 41 points. The Celtics won that game too. Two years later, Pierce played Kobe again but it was his turn to post a zero. He didn’t get a single rebound.

It was the Lakers/Celtics rivalry in full regalia. Kobe grew up a Lakers fan. So did Pierce who was raised in Inglewood. Drafted by the Celtics, Paul Pierce had to change alliances, change the color of his blood. Green replaced purple and gold.

The Kobe/Paul Pierce matchups were about more than basketball. It was about Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. It was about James Worthy and Kevin McHale. And Kareem Abdul- Jabaar and Robert Parish. It encompassed all of the history of the Lakers-Celtics melodrama. Kobe and Pierce didn’t just know it, they understood it. They breathed it.

So the NBA Finals in 2008 and 2010 were special events. In 2008, the NBA Finals took a dramatic turn. Pierce, after a Kobe Bryant crossover, lay prone like he was dead on the court. He was then propped into a wheelchair amidst all of his tragic glory and taken back to the locker room with all the dramatics of George Clooney being shot out of a cannon, weeping as he was leaving the court, only to return a few minutes later to the theme of Rocky. A 1 point Celtic lead suddenly mushroomed as Pierce donned the cape of a hero who had been buried in a grave only to come back fully resurrected. He hit back to back three pointers.

To Celtics fans he was healed by God. To Lakers fans he was the consummate con artist.

There would be revenge. In 2010, in game 7, the Celtics, at one point, had a 13 point lead. Kobe Bryant, playing on an injured knee, couldn’t shoot straight but the Celtics couldn’t keep him off the boards and he pulled in 15 rebounds. Paul Pierce missed 10 shots himself.

But the two would have something to say about how it ended. A minute was left and Kobe the playmaker had the ball in his hands with the Lakers up by three. Immediately Kevin Garnett came over to double Kobe who passed to Ron Artest. Paul Pierce was guarding Artest and contested his shot but it didn’t matter, not in that moment. Artest calmly hit a three and gave the Lakers a six point lead, putting the game out of reach. It was a devastating loss for the Celtics just as 2008 was a devastating loss for the Lakers.

Pierce is 37 years old. Bryant is 36. They are still trying to make sense out of these long basketball careers. As great as a lot of the younger players are, it’s tough to find the mental will and sadistic drive of Bryant and Pierce. They are old dogs. In the beginning, basketball was everything to them. In the middle, basketball was everything. And so it is at the end, as they are surrounded by younger players. Basketball is everything.

They come from an era long forgotten now. They were born absent of extracurriculars. All there was to do was play on a neighborhood court and talk trash while doing it. There wasn’t social media or smartphones or video games, there weren’t endless distractions. There was only Magic and Bird and Jordan on television. And Kobe and Pierce on the basketball court wanting to be just like them.

Almost 20 years later we can say they were. They were exactly like them.

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